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Dinners that make good lunch leftovers
DVG
No. 1 Honor StudentNether Institute, Evil AcademyRegistered User regular
No. 1 Honor StudentNether Institute, Evil AcademyRegistered User regular
I'm investigating starting to make dinners that will make for good lunches the next day, so I can hopefully spend less money on lunch meat and other packed lunch items.
So besides the obvious (pasta in a rubbermaid container, roast meat being used for sandwiches) what are some things you reuse to pack with you for the office the next day?
So besides the obvious (pasta in a rubbermaid container, roast meat being used for sandwiches) what are some things you reuse to pack with you for the office the next day?
Diablo 3 - DVG#1857
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Soup
Casseroles
Stew
Chili
Put water on it first.
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
Meatloaf, hamburgers, chicken, they all do well in the microwave.
Pizza, to me, is better at room temperature than hot.
Stuff that needs to be dressed store and re-heat better if you store them separately. So pasta and sauce stores and reheats better if you store the pasta and sauce separately. Also pasta reheats better if it's not quite done when you store it, otherwise it can get mushy on reheat.
Salads work better if you store wet/dressing separate from the greens and combine/dress right when you're about to eat.
If you're reheating a solid chunk of meat and some sides I've found reheating them separately works better then together, as your side will often reheat faster then the chunk of meat.
Another one I like is seasoned pan-fried boneless/skinless chicken breast with a side of pan-fried seasoned hashbrowns and onions.
I also like pot-roast and potatoes with gravy, but can't stand regular Roast Beef after it's been refrigerated.
If there is room in the Microwave, just placing a glass of water in it with your dish works well (less chance of "crap too much water..."). Also works well with pasta lefts overs that arn't saucy, or pizza (helps soften the crust.)
That bastardized Mexican lasagna is good for this too. I suppose it's got a real name though I don;t know it. You brown ground beef with chili seasoning, then layer it with cheese and some chopped chiles/salsa and/or beans with soft tortillas in a pan (like lasagna) and bake it until it melts together. Bring along some sour cream in a separate container the next day.
Another thing I re-heat is chicken and stuffing. Lay some boneless skinless chicken breasts in a casserole dish, mix a little milk with a can of cream-of-mushroom soup and cover the chicken with it, then mix up a box of stovetop stuffing and layer that on top. Bake for 35-40 minutes at 350 (until the chicken gets done and the stuffing its a little crispy on top. It's good and if you save out a breast with the topping for the next day it's good as well.
Let me put in a word for those Rubbermaid Easy-Find Lid containers. The gimmick is that all the sizes share only 3 sizes of lid (therefore you don;t have to dig around to find a match) and the lids snap to each other or to the bottom of the container... but the overall construction and tightness of lidification is great, especially if you get the 48 piece set for $20 at the warehouse store. The "semi-disosable" containers out there are much flimsier for not much less money, and the Rubbermaid containers with the little locking snaps... well the snaps break off after a while.
This.
My wife and I go to the grocery store usually on Saturday or Sunday when you can get good deals on meat. A lot of time they have pork or turkey tenderloin preseasoned packaged things on sale that we use for our Sunday supper and monday lunch with some potatoes or pasta. We also get a big uncut pork loin and have the deli chop it into thirds or half or whatever convenient size and freeze them separately.
Then we just thaw them out and make our own chops or whatever. One 6-7 dollar loin can make 12 delicious meals for us. Rice or potatoes plus whatever vegetable is cheap rounds it out. Makes my coworkers jealous.
Thick chunks of meat (hamburgers, thick pork chops, whole chicken breast) also don't fully survive the microwave. Slice meats thin. Slightly-undercooked (as in, maybe a minute shy of being perfect) meats also give you more room to fully reheat without ruining.
Stuff with lots of liquid built-in works best. Reheat in batches if there are multiple components (do the burger and the bun in separate batches, for example). Soups seem ideal but by the time the chicken chunks heat through the veggies are going to be reduced to mush.
Avoid plastic whenever possible, try to reheat in glass or ceramic. Plastic in the microwave smells like melting plastic well before it actually melts, and it'll ruin your lunch because all you can think about is how bad it smells.
Its easy to heat up, doesn't lose any of its taste through microwaving (quite a lot of meals categorically taste worse after they've been reheated, soup doesn't have this problem), and its filling if you have bread to dip with it.
I quite often take leftover soup (or instant soup when theres no soup been made recently) to work for lunch and I just pack 5-6 slices of buttered bread with the soup and have that. Fills you up very well.
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